Abstract
There is an increase in installations of exhaust gas scrubbers on ships following international regulations on sulphur content in marine fuel from 2020. We have conducted emission measurements on a four-stroke marine engine using low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO) and heavy fuel oil (HFO) at different steady state engine loads. For the HFO the exhaust was probed upstream and downstream of an exhaust gas scrubber. While sulphur dioxide was removed with high efficiency in the scrubber, the measurements of particle emissions indicate lower emissions at the use of LSFO than downstream of the scrubber. The scrubber removes between 32% and 43% of the particle mass from the exhaust at the HFO tests upstream and downstream of the scrubber, but levels equivalent to those in LSFO exhaust are not reached. Decreases in the emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH-16) and particulate matter as black carbon, organic carbon and elemental carbon, over the scrubber were observed for a majority of the trials, although emissions at LSFO use were consistently lower at comparable engine power.
Highlights
Regulations ban the use of marine residual fuels with sulphur mass content above 0.5% from 2020, in all ocean areas
A limited number of previous studies have been published with the purpose to quantify and communicate the potential to reduce harmful exhaust gases and particles by using marine exhaust gas scrubbers; in total, specific emissions from six marine engines equipped with scrubbers have been found in scientific literature [7,8,9,10,11]
This is interesting from the viewpoint of which substances in the exhaust gas that can be expected to be removed in the scrubbing process, and to what extent
Summary
Regulations ban the use of marine residual fuels with sulphur mass content above 0.5% from 2020, in all ocean areas. The same regulation that limits the marine fuel sulphur content aims at reducing particle emissions. A limited number of previous studies have been published with the purpose to quantify and communicate the potential to reduce harmful exhaust gases and particles by using marine exhaust gas scrubbers; in total, specific emissions from six marine engines equipped with scrubbers have been found in scientific literature [7,8,9,10,11]. The engine types, fuel oil, exhaust gas systems, and scrubber design differ between the two studies and could explain the differences in results. This paper presents the emission reduction potential of a closed-loop scrubber and compares emissions with those from combustion of low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO). Analyses of the scrubber water and ecotoxicology tests were part of the same campaign but are reported separately [6]
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